Shanghai native Chang Nianzu and his wife were visiting their local children’s playground with their four-year-old daughter, Chang Yuning, when he took this photograph. “The park is in Xuhui district, near the main football stadium. Shanghai is very colourful and clean, but for a hobbyist street photographer like me, it’s difficult to capture that. Sometimes there are other elements that interfere, like trees and parked bikes.”
As Nianzu watched his daughter explore, he realised the light and colours would lend themselves to a good photograph. His composition was inspired by American photographer Lee Friedlander: “In some of his work he intentionally includes his shadow, so I imitated this with my own shadow in the yellow triangle.” Nianzu then waited patiently with his Xiaomi 13 Pro for someone to walk up the stairs and complete his shot. Suddenly, another little girl, about six or seven, dressed all in purple, appeared. “It suited the scene perfectly,” Nianzu says.
He made minimal adjustments to the photo using the phone’s editing tools, leaving the colours untouched. “I think the set-up gives the viewer room for their imagination to wander, but I imagine the stairs representing the process of a child growing up. This little girl grows up in a colourful childhood and we adults are watching from behind the scenes. Happy moments like these deserve to be captured.”
